Marden [Map] And The Cunnington Manuscripts By Lt. Col. R. H. Cunnington

The object of this paper is partly to give a fuller account than has hitherto been published of Marden [Map] (in the parish of Beechingstoke) as it was in Colt Hoare's time; and partly to add a little to the descriptions of the Cunnington MS. given by Meyrick in his Sir Richard Colt Hoare and William Cunnington (WAM June 1948), and by me in the Appendix to The Cunningtons in Wiltshire (WAM June 1954), and to correct some mistakes in the latter. The additional information has some relevance to the account of Marden in A. W.; and, it is hoped, may also be of interest in itself.

The material supplied by Cunnington for Hoare's use in writing Ancient Wiltshire is in the five volumes of MS. (the Stourhead MS.) now in possession of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House. Copies of this material comprise the thirteen books, bound up in three volumes, in the Devizes Museum Library. They correspond as follows: vol. 1 to Books 1-111; vol. 11 to Books V-VIII, Vol. III to Books IV, XII, and XIII; Vol. IV to Books IX-XI, and Vol. V to part of Book IV. But the Devizes Books have some letters that are not in the volumes.

All the Books have a short Table of Contents; but the matter is often without arrangement, either in date or subject, and is quite differently ordered in A. W. For each item, however, William Cunnington, F.G.S., when the MS. was in his possession, usually made a reference, in pen or pencil, to the corresponding page in A. W. He has also added, generally on a slip attached, a copy of any comments made by Leman¹ and others, with Cunnington's rejoinder. He got these from the Stourhead MS. before it was given to the Society of Antiquaries; and from the same source added four pages missing from Book XIII. Sometimes he has also corrected mistakes, as when his grandfather supposed copper had been hardened with iron and tin, he erased "iron." These amendments, etc., can be recognised by the handwriting or the initials W.C.

Note 1. The Rev. T. Leman was a Bath, not Norfolk, antiquary.

Besides the thirteen Books, there are in the Museum Library three volumes of MS. chiefly of letters written to Cunnington. Vol. I has the most important, viz. those from Wyndham, Coxe, and Hoare. Hoare seldom dated his letters except by the day of the week, and many of them have been dated in pencil, but not always correctly, nor are they all in the right order. The volumes also have a few letters written by Cunnington, either copies or the originals returned by Wyndham, Coxe, Leman, or Britton.

There are also a few loose sheets, mostly duplicates; and some imperfect diaries written at intervals by Colt Hoare, one of which is labelled "Collections for Wilts" but he hardly made any use of these for his History.

In A. W., Hoare describes the material sent him (The Stourhead MS) as "Our Journal"; and he also uses the words "we" and "our" in the editorial sense: they do not imply that he was present at the excavation described. For instance on page 199 he wrote, regarding the Normanton barrows, "circumstances prevented my being present at the opening of them. The superintendence of our researches was therefore committed to the penetrating eye and experienced judgement of Mr. Cunnington." Nevertheless in the pages which follow, describing the excavations, he constantly uses "we" and "our" as if he had been there. Similarly on page 117 Hoare wrote "we" throughout the account of opening barrow no. 3, including "we have left some of the mortar containing the burned bones near the top of the barrow to satisfy the curiosity of any person who might wish to examine it." Whereas Cunnington's account on page 27 of Book IX is:—"I have put some of the mortar containing the burnt bones near the top of the barrow for yourself or any other person to see."

We get the impression in the Normanton account that Hoare's absence (he was touring in Wales) was exceptional, whereas in fact he was much more often absent than not. The plural is less often used for barrows opened before the end of 1803, i.e., before he undertook writing the History, and for these he has generally mentioned Cunnington by name as the excavator. Occasionally he uses the passive tense, and these differences were no doubt made partly to give variety.

No doubt too he felt quite justified in using the plurals "we" and "our" since he was paying for the labour. Apart from this, Hoare has transcribed faithfully and fully, without however Cunnington's circumlocutions; so the printed text usually suffices. Meyrick in WAM has pointed out some of the omissions, and there are a few others, but, with one exception, of no great importance. The exception is Marden, with which the rest of this paper will deal. It is the one instance where Hoare acknowledges a serious disagreement with Cunnington, and this may be partly because Cunnington was dead before he wrote his account in Vol. Il, so there had been no opportunity of thrashing out their differences.

The printed account is on pages 4—7 of A. W. II, and the MS. sources are Books VIII, pp. 10—12, and XII pp. 23—32, together with Hoare's diary quoted in part on pp. 234—238 of WAM XXII. Hoare's account, apart from the differences, leaves much to be desired, and this is all the more regrettable because of the importance of the subject : after Stonehenge and Avebury, Marden was probably the most interesting prehistoric monument in Wilts, and was evidently considered so by Cunnington. Hoare, who was always seeking for novelties,' was disappointed in missing the interment in the great tumulus, and finding nothing but a few bones and ashes; and, being no longer restrained by Cunnington, has indulged in some rather wild speculation, forgetting his motto, WE SPEAK FROM FACTS, NOT THEORY, to fill up the three or four pages he gives to the subject.

The monument was then in process of destruction by the plough, and is now still more completely obliterated. Owing partly to Hoare's omissions, we hardly realise what a stupendous work it was. A huge bank and ditch, the bank outside, partly surrounded the area. Some of it had been ploughed or cut away in the memory of man, and no trace of it was visible on the river side over the water-meadow. In A.W. Hoare claims that it had crossed the stream; but Cunnington, although he acknowledged this was possible, and knew that it was the opinion of Mayo, Vicar of Beechingstoke, thought otherwise After examining the ground three times, I saw nothing to support this opinion except a bit of rough ground just below the letter M, which might be construed as pointing to the vallum at G¹ ... I cannot believe the vallum ever crossed the water, and I think you will be of the same opinion.

Note 1. On Cunnington's plan M is beyond E, on the right hand edge of Hoare's plan; and G is the same as Hoare's D. Hoare gives no north point: it is nearly in the direction of D to B.

After Hoare's visit to the site with Cunnington on October 10th 1807, he was of the same opinion, and gave an additional reason for it in his diary: "Though no traces whatever of its complete continuation remain at present, I have no doubt of such a continuance, and that, in forming the water meadows, where only the vallum is interrupted, these vestiges were removed. This work, though certainly laborious and expensive, was much facilitated by the light sandy nature of the soil, and the value of water meadows to a Wiltshire farmer is such as to render my supposition of that part of the vallum which stood in their way having been removed, highly probable."

Nevertheless in A.W. Hoare agrees with Mayo, and as a consequence, allows fifty-one acres for the whole monument as against Cunnington's twenty-eight to thirty.

Cunnington measured the bank:- "On extending a line over it, viz. from the bottom of the ditch, it measured 112 feet"¹ and noted that "before this was in tillage it must have been much higher than at present." The dimension is not given in A.W.

Note 1. When unable to measure the vertical height, it was his usual practice to measure from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the bank.

After his preliminary reconnaisance in May 1806, Cunnington wrote an account to Owen (page 49 of Book V Ill) in which he claimed that there had been a surround of stones, as at Avebury. Meyrick has given an abstract of this, but perhaps the full story is worth quoting: I am of opinion it had a circle or circles of stones set round the area on the verge of the ditch similar to Abury; for in passing the narrow bridges and horse path from the Mill to the Work, you perceive a great many sarsen stones in the water. These stones are not so large as those in the outer circle of Stonehenge, yet several of them are as large as those in the inner circle of the latter place. A farmer told me he thought they were probably brought from Kennet and placed there to protect the banks of ye river from being washed down by the stream; but this is by no means probable. On the road a little way from the Mill is a sarsen much larger than those in the water."

In the accounts for Hoare no mention is made of the stones, and Cunnington may have changed his mind. On the other hand he had a special reason for mentioning them to Owen, which did not apply to Hoare. For one thing Owen had not seen the place, and Hoare had. Also Owen was Welsh, and Cunnington thought that "religious circles," as he believed Marden to be, were always made with stones in Wales. In South Wilts, where stones were scarce, he thought, and had told Hoare, that for religious circles there may have been stones as well as bank and ditch, but that these would almost always have been stolen for building purposes.

If there had been stones at Marden, as he supposed, their removal to revet the river bank would have been likely; but it would not take many years for most, if not all of them, to sink into the sand; and it would be difficult now to find anything like the same quantity that Cunnington saw in 1806.

The account of the huge tumulus, Hatfield Barrow, on page 25 of Book XII, and in the corresponding MS. at Burlington House, reads: ' A line extending over the barrow from ditch to ditch measures . feet." In the earlier account of Book V Ill the missing figure is 483. Probably Hoare forgot the earlier account existed, or did not trouble to consult it, for in A. W. the diameter is not given, and the only dimension for the barrow is its height, 22½ feet, measured by the surveyor, Crocker. The 483 feet must have been from the outer edges of the ditch, for Crocker told Cunnington that the barrow was about 4 chains over "; and Cunnington's letter to Owen says that it covered about an acre, which tallies closely with Crocker's measurement.

Hoare in one of his letters says that Mayo's father wrote an account of Marden for Archaeologia. This is a mistake, for Archaeologia was not then published; but he did write an account for the Society of Antiquaries, which Gough in his edition of Camden has printed among the Additions for Wiltshire (Page 159 of 2nd Ed. 1806), and given a diagram (Fig. 2, Plate IX). This account describes the outer ring as a complete circle with a ditch about 15 yards wide and entrances N.W. and S.W. (The Fig. shows them opposite each other); and gives the area as 30 acres, agreeing closely with Cunnington's estimate. The tumulus was said to be 70 or 80 yards in diameter, almost exactly as Crocker found it, and 50 feet high. If it was then unploughed and as steep as Silbury Hill is now, 50 feet would be about right, and it might by Hoare's time easily have been reduced to 22½. Mayo junior said 40 feet, but this was probably only a guess. Hoare, when he first saw it, was so impressed as to assert in a letter to Cunnington that in its original state Hatfield Barrow and Silbury Hill must have been visible from each other (with Milk Hill hundreds of feet higher than either standing directly between He says in A. W. that by 1818 it had been completely levelled.

Since Mayo and Crocker gave the same diameter for the tumulus, everything ploughed off it must have gone into the ditch, and there can have been no berm between them. The overall diameter being 483 feet, it follows that the ditch must have been about 120 feet in width.

The barrow was opened on Monday, October 5th, 1807, and the exceptionally large number of eight men was employed for ten days. During this time Hoare seems to have visited it only once. In the early part of the week he was exploring Roman remains near Marlborough, and on the 9th drove to Everley, where he met Cunnington (whom in the diary he calls his Magnus Apollo) and went riding with him in search of barrows and earthworks. On the 10th he drove to Marden and saw the work in progress; but a fall of sand when the floor was nearly uncovered interrupted it; and he records in his diary "I left Marden and ascended the chalk hills," and after visiting a number of earthworks, "returned to Everley, gratified and benefited as usual by my ride amongst the Britons."

Marden is not again mentioned in the diary, and the result of the dig was reported to Hoare a week later by letter. It is true that the account in A. W. reads as if he had been present during the whole excavation. But this is owing to his habit of using ' we," to which reference has already been made. He claims that he was making a full statement of the facts drawn from " our Journal for the year 1809." The date should be 1807, and the mistake will be explained later. The quotation from the " Journal " is in inverted commas; but this is another of Hoare's practices, and does not mean an exact quotation. Actually it is a paraphrase of the account given in XII 23—32 (which is undated), with some omissions and one addition (of the landslide which stopped work). On the whole it is accurate; and the most important omission is the foot-note of page 28, which reads:—" I should have observed before that a great deal of the floor has the appearance of rusty iron, a little like the Sutton barrow, and probably from the same cause.

Oct 1807. Hoare's reply to this letter (headed " October Meeting, Stourhead 1807 " in Hoare's Letters to Cunnington) shows that at the time Hoare agreed both to the conclusions reached and the rightness of stopping further work. It begins with a long account of his own doings and ends with:—" I am on the whole well satisfied with our work . . I am not quite so well satisfied about our Giant, and tho. I think with you it was certainly sepulchral; yet I cannot but wish we had removed all doubt by finding the interment. You did right however in not proceeding. "

02 Nov 1807. Cunnington wrote to Crocker on November 2nd, 1807 (Letter inserted at XII, 31) briefly describing the result of his excavation. He seems to have recognised that his view was being questioned, for he adds:- "I am fully convinced myself that it is sepulchral, but from missing the interment others may think differently....I shall make a long paper of Marden, and giving my opinions, I hope I shall do it modestly, and leave others to think as they please."

The others included Leman, and eventually Hoare, who was clearly influenced by him. Leman wrote to Cunnington (XII, 29, 30) 'I have not heard from Sir Richard Hoare about your exploring of Marden, but I foretold the event to him when he was leaving Bath, because it was hardly probable that in a place which had been originally a Hill Altar, and was evidently a religious Sanctuary, anything could be discovered more than the remains of one High Priest, if even that was allowed to be interred in so sacred a place."

In A.W. Hoare's disagreement is expressed as follows:- "Mr. Cunnington was of opinion that the mound was sepulchral, but from the discoveries we (the italics are mine) made when digging down from the summit to the floor, I do not think he found a sufficient basis to support his hypothesis .... Although I have so frequently agreed in opinion with Mr. Cunnington on British topics, I cannot justify myself in coalescing with him respecting the sepulchral origin of this tumulus .... It may probably have been either a Hill Altar or Locus Consecratus, at which the Druids attended to decide various causes and issue their decrees.'

The Hill altar, as we have seen was borrowed from Leman, and so pleased Hoare that on page 12 he suspects that the long barrow, Adam's Grave [Map], may have been another. The Locus Consecratus was a suggestion from Mayo in a letter to Hoare written after Cunnington's death.

Hoare's speculations are of course worthless, except as evidence of his suggestibility and fondness for romance. But, as Meyrick has pointed out, the sepulchral origin, if substantiated, would do away once for all with the more recent suggestion that the Marden earthworks may possibly have been Norman (Introduction to the Archaeology of Wiltshire, 3rd Edition, page 160, where again the mistake is made of dating the excavation 1809 instead of 1807).

In a mound covering an acre it is not surprising that an exposure of some twenty-three feet of floor should have failed to find the interment even of "one High Priest" and one wonders why Hoare and Cunnington should have been so optimistic as to expect it.

I have said nothing about the huge "disc barrow" within the enclosure, since the MS. account adds nothing to that printed in A. W.